I will have much more to say on the “how” question. And, over the course of the next few weeks, I look forward to sharing with readers some of the exciting information about our new Master of Science in Law program for Scientists, Engineers, and Medical Professionals — what I have come to calling LAW-STEM as a shorthand.
Start with some assumptions that the law school world takes for granted: We are in the business of training lawyers. We train students for careers not “in the law” but “as lawyers.” The difference in these phrases is a salient one, for the principal reason that the guilds that control access to the profession of lawyering, the state bar examiners, mandate (for the most part) that a license is required to “practice law” and, further, that a JD degree from an ABA-accredited law school (again, for the most part) is required to sit for the bar.
Herewith a central mantra of our profession: Law schools train would-be lawyers; and only lawyers practice law.
But the project of educating folks in law for the careers they will undertake is much broader than the project of training lawyers. Legal education is critical for many endeavors in both the business world in the public sector. Consider just three examples of many:
I want to embroider on this “and concepts” point for a sec. As we know from the work we do with law students, it is ordinarily not sufficient to simply “look up” the law. We want our students to have foundational, core knowledge upon which to build with a structure of key competencies, specific legal information, and a strategy for researching and communicating the law and pertinent legal rules. In short, we expect our law students to develop not only, or even especially, mechanical skills, but analytical skills. And we expect that these skills will be built on a coherent edifice of foundational knowledge.
We should want roughly the same for those individuals who will benefit from specialized legal knowledge — as in the three examples above. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” as the saying goes. It will be important to see legal training for non-lawyers in the somewhat wider context of imparting foundational knowledge and core legal concepts, not simply gesturing toward rulebooks, not simply giving them the quick and dirty description of applicable statutes, regulations, and caselaw.
So, to come back to the “why” question: Legal education can and ought to be broadened to include a wider audience than just the training of lawyers. We should think about the project and promise of contemporary legal education as about educating individuals in law and legal concepts so as to enable them to thrive in spaces where law matters greatly, but where they do not aspire to “practice law” in the guild-constructed sense in which this phrase is typically deployed.
Thus far I have elided the deeper question of whether and to what extent we should rethink this wall between “practicing law” and non-lawyers deploying legal skills in concrete situations. This is a hard, complex question for sure. But, while this law persists, we should reflect upon whether legal educators should think about our functions, roles, and projects as so narrowly drawn.
In another post, I want to broaden this discussion even further, by describing the ways in which democraticizing legal education can have some social benefits. Here, I am just making the practical point that educating non-lawyers is valuable for the non-lawyers.
